


Until It's Done

by csi_sanders1129



Category: Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: Betrayals, Comfortember 2020, Jealousy, Lashing Out, Manipulation, Old Feelings, Reunion, Threats, prison break - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27970418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/csi_sanders1129/pseuds/csi_sanders1129
Summary: In which Dan hears of Herbert’s escape from prison and reacts the only way he can.
Kudos: 16
Collections: Comfortember 2020





	Until It's Done

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Comfortember 2020, Prompt: Lashing Out. Set post-Beyond Re-Animator. Comments and kudos would be awesome. Enjoy!

Dan gets home from a long night shift at the clinic with a plan. Grab something quick to eat, grab a shower, head to bed before he has to be back at work for another shift tonight. He flicks on the television out of habit, just for the background noise, and suddenly his plans change. There's a special news report, Herbert's face is on the screen and Dan knows what it means before he hears a single word.

Herbert's escaped.

Shit.

He'll be coming, Dan knows. No matter that they haven't spoken in 13 years, he's still the reason Herbert ended up in prison. He's still the one who betrayed their partnership, turned him in when things got too out of hand to contain. He's still the one who took the deal, took the plea, took the stand.

He's as sure now as he was then that it had been the right thing to do. By that point, Herbert's experiments were little more than bits and pieces of corpses Frankenstein'd together in a mockery of the thing he'd set out to do. Combined with The Bride... Dan doesn't know when it became less about defeating death and more about fucking with life, but there had been a line and they'd crossed it. And they'd gotten caught.

And Herbert doesn't do forgive and forget. He'll be coming.

And Dan will let him.

He doesn't doubt that Herbert will find him, either. He'd left Arkham not long after the trial, moved far enough away to start over with a license he'd only barely managed to keep, kept his head down, kept out of trouble. He's moved twice since then and without fail, there's been a postcard every year since, on the anniversary of the conviction. It was always blank, but Dan got the message all the same. Herbert knew where he'd gone, knew exactly where to find him.

He's not convinced he doesn't deserve whatever Herbert has in store for him. It's not like Dan's done anything particularly useful with his freedom, he's sure Herbert would consider it a waste, especially combined with his own imprisonment.

A few moments of actually listening to the news tells him when the escape happened, lets him calculate the absolute earliest Herbert could get here from the prison. Assuming he managed to steal a car and get out of whatever blockades the police managed to put up (which it sounds like he has given he hasn't been recaptured yet), it shouldn't be much longer. He unlocks the front door – no need to make it unnecessarily difficult. He takes a shower. He makes breakfast, enough for two. He waits.

If he didn't steal a car, or if he had to lay low, Dan considers, sometime later, long after breakfast has gone cold and Herbert has yet to appear, then it could be considerably longer. He calls out of work. He goes to sleep.

"Danny. You were expecting me," Herbert says, his voice achingly familiar as it pulls him back to consciousness.

Dan rolls over, blinks up at the face looking down at him in the darkness of his room. Older, but the same, tired, worn, exhausted, pained. His eyes, adjusting slowly, flick over the other man's blood stained clothing and fresh bruises on pale skin. "Feel free to clean up, if you'd like," he offers, gesturing the bathroom. "I'm not going anywhere."

"I know," Herbert agrees, and seems inclined to take him up on the offer.

Dan gets up, too, rifles through the depths of his closet in search of the clothes that would never fit him and lays them out neatly. He'd purchased them long ago, back when he first realized that this day was bound to come eventually. Anyone else might have considered locking the escaped convict in the bathroom, calling the police and having him thrown back in prison with an even lengthier sentence, but it never occurs to him. Not even for a second. Again, he waits.

"You really were expecting me," Herbert concedes, sounding almost surprised to find the crisp dress shirt and slacks waiting for him when he reappears, wrapped in a towel. "It won't save you."

"Didn't think it would," Dan answers.

"No wife, no kids, no pets," Herbert observes, once he's dressed. "I'm surprised. You threw away so much to get away from me - I thought you would take your second chance at a normal life and opt for that plebian white picket fence approach you seemed so interested in."

Dan doesn't kid himself. If anyone had been even remotely in his orbit, Herbert would have taken them. But Herbert isn't here to debate Dan's life choices. He's here for payback. And there's no sense in wasting time – sooner or later, the police will check in with him about Herbert's escape no matter how much time and distance Dan's put between them. "Whatever you came here to do, Herbert, just do it," he says. "You want me dead? Kill me. You want me as a subject? Whatever, dose me, shoot me up with whatever serum you undoubtedly cooked up while you were locked away. What do you want?"

"First," Herbert says, his voice deceptively even for the look in his eyes at the reminder of Dan's disloyalty. "I want to know why."

Dan takes a moment before he answers, trying to fit 13 years worth of rationalizations and realizations into whatever explanation he manages. A part of him wants to say that he didn't have a choice to betray Herbert, but he did. He could have kept his mouth shut, taken the blame right alongside him – it certainly would have been deserved for his part in their experiments – but he hadn't. He'd been too pissed off to do that, then, too angry in the wake of all the stupid shit Herbert had been pulling since the beginning – the bodysnatching, the monsters in the walls, killing the cop, talking him into building The Bride, killing Hill in the first place, bringing him back.

"'Why'? You were out of control," Dan starts, incredulous. "The things you were making were monsters! We built a whole person out of used parts, Herbert. That wasn't what this was supposed to be. We got caught because of the things you did. And, yeah, I should have stopped you before it got that far, but I was never very good at that, was I?" Herbert opens his mouth to respond, but Dan barrels on, figures this is probably his last chance to do so before Herbert does whatever he came here for. "No, we got caught because you lashed out – with the creatures, with The Bride, with the dog, with the cop and it wasn't even about the damn science, then, was it? It was because you were jealous. We got caught because you loved me. You didn't want to, but you did. You wanted me to stay. Every time I tried to leave, you pulled me back in. With a breakthrough, or a promise, or a _heart_ ," Dan's long since resigned himself to the manipulation he faced from Herbert, things he can see now that he couldn't see then, too close to the situation to see through Herbert's influence. Not that he's any better at resisting now.

"I did. I loved you," Herbert admits, which is a surprise. "I can admit that now. I couldn't then. Those girls… Meg, Francesca, all the ones in between. None of them understood what we were doing. And I _needed_ you – they didn't. At first you were just useful. A sounding board. Muscle to deal with the unruly specimens. And you were loyal, like a big, dumb golden retriever – until you weren't. But here you are, waiting for me, when you should have left. What is it _you_ want?"

It's a question Dan hadn't expected – there are a lot of things in what Herbert just said he hadn't expected. He didn't think the other man would ever admit to actually having any feelings at all, let alone feelings for him. He didn't think Herbert would get quite so personal with his insults, but then Herbert never has held back so maybe he should have seen that coming. He didn't think Herbert would turn the tables on him. And what does he want, anyway? How did he expect this to go? Not like this.

Honestly, he expected Herbert to kill him. When he'd thought about this reunion he'd always figured that was how it would end. Herbert wouldn't hurt him (wouldn't damage a potential specimen more than necessary at least, wouldn't use a gun or a knife or do anything that would make reanimation less effective). If he had to guess, he would have expected Herbert to dose him with something before he even knew what was happening. He could have – could have drugged Dan while he slept. But, he didn't.

And he doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to come back as one of Herbert's failed experiments, violent and volatile and just another monster. So, what's left?

"I want to finish what we started," he says, though the words surprise him just as much as they seem to surprise Herbert. "You still need me. You're an escaped convict. You can't exactly go shopping for materials," Dan tries, and maybe this is what was always going to happen, maybe he always ends up with Herbert West pulling his strings. Still, he pushes, makes the offer more appealing. "I'm sure you don't… love me anymore, but there won't be any girls this time," he promises. "No reasons to get jealous. No risk that I'll leave. You and me, until it's done."

"Why should I trust you again?"

"Do you have a choice? Did you find a new big, dumb golden retriever in prison?"

"I did, actually, but I broke him already," Herbert swiftly counters. "He didn't take losing his girlfriend nearly as well as you did." Dan takes the hit, doesn't react to the obvious baiting. "But, you are correct. My current wanted status would prevent me from continuing to research the breakthroughs I've made."

He wants to ask what Herbert possibly could have learned while locked up, but he doesn't. Herbert always finds a way to wiggle his way out of the rules and if he managed any progress in prison, Dan's not entirely surprised. He was probably the cause of the crazy prison riot the news had mentioned, probably had at least one dead-not-dead inmate running around causing chaos. Still, the words linger in his head – Herbert had tried out a new partner. It didn't work and now he was back with his old one. Herbert didn't kill him when he had the chance. And surely Herbert knew that he'd need help evading the police. The pieces slot into place, perhaps a bit too late for it to matter. "You didn't come here to kill me, did you? You came to get me back."

"Of course," Herbert agrees. "If you'd been… less inclined to reestablish our previous arrangement, then I suppose I would have had to kill you, then. I assure you I much prefer this outcome to that one."

Maybe Herbert's just as stuck with Dan as Dan is stuck with him, too entwined with each other to move on. Maybe Herbert still harbors some small emotion for him, even after 13 years apart. Maybe Dan loved him back then, too, maybe some part of him still does.

Herbert holds up a vial sparking with firefly-like electricity, no doubt the secret to whatever new development he's found on the road to defeating death. "Let's go, then," he says, "You and me. Until it's done."

Until it's done.


End file.
